news details |
|
|
| Conflicting claims on arrest of Taliban spokesman | | | Kabul | Sep 27
The Afghan government announced today it had arrested the Taliban movement's main spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, but a man believed to be the militants' mouthpiece denied he had been captured.
The interior ministry said Ahmadi was seized with his brother yesterday in the volatile southern province of Helmand where the Islamic extremist Taliban are in control of several districts.
They were arrested by police near the provincial capital Lashkar Gah with motorcycles and a gun, as well as a satellite and a mobile telephone, a ministry statement said.
"One of the men himself confessed that, "I am Mawlawi Mohammad Qasim working under the pseudonym Qari Yousuf Ahmadi. I am the Taliban spokesman and military commander," Helmand police chief Mohammad Hossain Andiwal told AFP.
They were captured from a house in the area and had been sent to Kabul for questioning, Andiwal said.
But a man with Ahmadi's voice telephoned AFP on the number that he usually uses to say he had not been captured.
"This is pure government propaganda. They say they have arrested me but here I am talking to you. I am free," Ahmadi said.
A Western diplomat said the interior ministry's report should be treated with caution.
An AFP reprter who has spoken to Ahmadi over the past year said the voice was the same as that of the man who usually introdues himself s Yousuf Ahmadi.
Another man sometimes calls media from Ahmadi's previous telephone number with Taliban statements that he says can be attributed to Yousuf Ahmadi, although he never introduces himself by that name, the reporter said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
